That is neither a typo nor a lie. By Rock Band bundle, I refer to the game+guitar+drums+microphone, for both the 360 and PS3. I think this is officially called the Rock Band 2 Special Edition, but I think “bundle” gets the point across a bit more. You can get all those goodies at Toys “R” Us this week (12/14-12/20) for $110 plus a $25 gift card, bringing the net total to $85. Hence the “basically $85″ part of the title.

I, of course, could not resist this deal. Less than half the price it normally goes for? I am fucking THERE. Especially since Pearl Jam’s album Ten has been announced as upcoming DLC. J.I.MP. I recommend this deal to every single person with a 360 or PS3 who hasn’t already bought a bundle of Rock Band 1 or 2 or Guitar Hero: World Tour, because even if you hate it due to being soulless, you could sell the shit off and make your money back and then some.

And for those counting at home, I now have three fake guitars in my possession, with my first fake drum set to keep them company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJWFZvYRIAo

This is one song that I never imagined would find its way into Rock Band. Its music video was banned from MTV, and now the song is in a game owned by the same company that owns MTV. What a difference 17 years make. Of course, I’m elated that a song this brutally awesome is now available for playing on fake instruments. I only wish I had room for a fake drumset. I guess I’ll have to settle for straining my vocal chords.

Now, I don’t have Rock Band, even though I’ve mentioned it numerous times on here and really do want it. I just can’t justify having a huge fake drum set. Maybe if I lived on my own. But I have nowhere to put the drum set in my room. I’ve said this.

But now I’m really tempted to just buy the game, no matter how dumb that may seem. Just because of this bassline:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLq8YlVteZs

Muse is so awesome. “Hysteria” is on the Marketplace right now. $2 (160 MS points). Buy it. Buy it. 5, 4, 3, 2, BUY IT.

That’s all I needed. I would pay $6.25+tax (500 MS points) for that alone.

But “Exo-Politics” and “Supermassive Black Hole” are also in the 3-song pack being released on May 8.

Meanwhile, Rock Band is getting some pack with Fallout Boy in it.

So for one week, GH3 > Rock Band.

But I might need to finally buy Rock Band when “Hysteria” is released for it (guessing it will coincide with the European release on May 22).

- Bangs are the worst haircut/hairstyle this side of Princess Leia/Queen Amidala. Any girl that convinces herself that bangs look good is too lazy to fix her hair up in a decent way. A girl actually looking decent in bangs is solely due to her being attractive to begin with. Let’s have one of the most beautiful women in the world demonstrate:

Sure, one of these pics was taken 15 years before the other, but the point still stands! I can do whatever I want! This is MY blog! Bangs suck!

- Burnout Paradise not having local multiplayer of any kind is a travesty. I really cannot describe how pissed I am at the multitude of 360 games that seemingly ignore that people actually still want to play games together IN PERSON.

- The Democratic Party is more self-destructive than the African continent. Hillary winning Ohio and Texas means that this is in all likelihood going to the convention, so by the time Obama and Hillary are through with each other, they probably won’t stand much of a chance against McCain in November. Not like a black guy and a woman had much of a chance against a bona fide war veteran anyway.

- The Aviator is Martin Scorsese’s best film this decade. Fact.

- “Still Alive” is a godawful song to be in Rock Band. Maybe if Rock Band were called Clever, but Ultimately Boring Hero, it’d fit in better. “Hell March” kicks the living shit out of it. As does it’s sequel. Who doesn’t want to yell in German? Not to mention that any gamer my age worth his salt grew up thinking “Hell March” was possibly the coolest game song ever.

- While I’m on it, Rock Band needs instrumentals. That would open up so many more possible songs. Just write up some code and embed it in the song DLC to make sure it’s out of the World Band Tour rotation when one of the players is on the mic. In that case, “Full Stop” would totally rock balls. As would a bunch of other Frank Klepacki songs. God, the Command and Conquer series is so awesome. I need a new PC.

- After an incident this past weekend, I’ve become convinced of one thing. Long Island needs a guido genocide.

My questionable vocal capabilities aside, I should’ve been one of the first people to buy and cherish Rock Band. (Technically, I was, but I bought it for a Canadian and shipped it to him out of the goodness of my heart.) I was hyping the game since its infancy, proselytizing the masses, only to turn around and buy Guitar Hero III because I couldn’t wait the extra month. With a new rhythm game to play, I decided I would wait on Rock Band. Since then, I’ve played it on Festivus over a friend’s house, and at Best Buy a couple of times — once for an hour and a half with a complete stranger. It was a amazing bonding experience.

So I’m still waiting. I’m waiting for a reasonably priced game+drums SKU that will never come. I’m waiting for the full albums that were promised to be announced. I’m waiting for Muse, Soundgarden, and Led Zeppelin to get DLC packs. I’m waiting for the complaints about the fake instruments to stop flooding the internet. But these are just the excuses I come up with. I’m not refraining from buying the game due to these reasons, I’m coming up with these excuses because I’m afraid of buying the game. (Yeah, I just watched Se7en today. I love that movie.)

It’s taken me a while to sink down to each level of nerddom I’ve experienced in my lifetime. I lurked GAF for almost a year before I finally registered. For years, I never had the urge to go on IRC, but I eventually did that. When I first heard of Guitar Hero, I thought everyone on GAF praising it was a loser of the highest order; it took real-life friends lauding it and me playing GH at Best Buy numerous times to finally accept its transcendent awesomeness into my heart and home. Talking to a internet friend on the phone — another step that really set off an alarm with my self-consciousness. Now I have reached another crossroads: owning a massive plastic drum set.

I don’t know how I could look my parents in the eye while owning a collection of Fisher-Price musical instruments in their house. It’s bad enough that I already own two fake guitars that take up a good amount of under-the-bed storage space. A third fake guitar and I might as well build a fake guitar stand. Oh wait, someone at GAF already did that. I pray to God that I never get that accepting of my pathetic hobbies.

Maybe I’m too insecure, but I think a bit of self-awareness and restraint is a good thing. I have no doubt I would own Rock Band if I lived on my own, but by that time I’ll be supporting myself, which hopefully would alleviate the embarrassment of owning such toys. Nothing screams pathetic like living at home with piles of music game controllers surrounding you — which is pretty much what would happen considering I have no storage space left.

In closing, I love you Rock Band, but I think I’m going to limit myself to Guitar Hero for the foreseeable future. I just wish it had awesome DLC like you do.

On the other hand, Conan isn’t helping the cause for writers because he’s been freaking awesome the three shows he’s done without them. He just doesn’t care.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVxbAvD1onc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrfMG1LaJj8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czKY-r6hLRQ

Enjoy.

mms://stream.vg/joshieTV

There ya go. Better than porn.

Apparently, these are dudes from Something Awful. I should just get an account there already.

There’s also another dude who seems to be playing even more often…

mms://stream.vg/waffle

Note: If these don’t work on click, try opening them up in Windows Media Player. If that doesn’t work. Download VLC (you should have it anyway), open it up, hit Ctrl+N, and then paste the URL into the bottom.

Now, I’m going to go back on my word and verdict by saying that I’ve decided against buying Rock Band for the foreseeable future after playing it at Best Buy. The guitar parts on expert weren’t challenging at all for a Guitar Hero veteran like myself, and the drums were a joke. This was because there was no bass pedal included in the kiosk. I know that with the bass pedal it’s going to be 5x harder, but I couldn’t help feeling bored by the game. As a result, my hype meter has fallen dramatically. With GH3, I have my rhythm game fix for a few months. The online aspect of GH3 just adds so much replayability to the game, even if the majority of Live players are absolutely insane and pick “Through the Fire and the Flames” way too much. I might just split the cost for Rock Band with Justin if he’s up for it around Christmas time. Either that, or just buy the drum-only SKU when it’s released early next year. There’s not enough room in my humble abode for so many faux instruments.

I’ve been helplessly addicted to a couple of XBLA games. I got a quadrillion points in Every Extend Extra Extreme unlimited mode and haven’t played much since then. Timed mode and online are the only modes worth playing in that game. Even then, there’s not really much to it. Setting off the explosion before your shield runs out and on beat is the entire game. “Revenge” mode is even more broken. It takes a special development team to come out with two worthless games in one. I just became entranced the first time I played it, which led to the 1,000,000,000,000,000 points.

The other XBLA game that I’ve been playing incessantly is Puzzle Quest. It’s a puzzle-RPG hybrid that is incredibly addictive. It has the basic mechanics of Bejeweled – you have a rectangular playing field, and you match up gems in rows of 3 or more – only now you have spells and leveling up to deal with. The only catch is that after playing the game for a while (probably 20-25 hours), I still don’t think I’m close to completing it. While it’s a fun game, such a simple system can’t sustain such a long quest. But I’m going to end up finishing it and maxing out my character’s level at 50 just for the achievements. Damn it.

I also just finished playing some Halo 3. I did fairly well, too. Too bad that once I buy Call of Duty 4 in three days nothing else matters. Circuit City is offering a free copy of Call of Duty 3 with the purchase of COD4. I can’t wait to sell that piece of shit. In addition, Circuit City is also selling Virtua Fighter 5 for only $39.99. I really was gonna ask for that for Christmas, but I can’t pass that up. Burger King is also offering a coupon for a $10 Gift Card with a purchase of a game $39.99, so I’m going to take advantage of that too. Here’s the coupon. You have install some bullshit coupon printer, but whatever. For the record, these deals are seemingly only for the 360 versions of each game. Sorry PS3 owners.

Man, I love my 360. Between all these games, I’m gonna be set for a while. I might just sell my copy of Rainbow Six: Vegas. Poor guy never even got a chance to shine.

This Sunday (or Saturday night, if you’re hitting up a Best Buy midnight launch) Guitar Hero III will officially be hitting store shelves. In less than a month, the makers of the first two Guitar Hero games will be releasing their new massive game pictured above – Rock Band. The former is the standard 5-button plastic guitar affair that gamers have come to know and love — or possibly get sick of — while the latter comes in a $160 or $170 (depending on whether the graphics are next-gen or not) package complete with game, guitar, drums, and microphone. But you already knew this.

What you might not have known is how Red Octane made the guitar peripherals for the first two Guitar Hero games, but is part of Activision now, so while Harmonix moved on to make Rock Band under EA, Red Octane is still with the Guitar Hero series. Together with Neversoft (famous for creating the Tony Hawk series) they have created the third installment. For some reason, they’re deciding to be fucking douchebags and are locking out the Rock Band guitar somehow, which means it will NOT be compatible with Guitar Hero III. Complete and total bullshit. At least the 360 GH2 guitar works with 3, though. Over on the PS3 side, it seems that the GH3 guitar will not be backwards-compatible with the old games. On top of that, the adapter that was created to allow gamers to use their old PS2 guitar controllers doesn’t work well at all. What a mess.

Naturally, Harmonix is being awesome and all the previous Guitar Hero controllers (including GH3!) will be compatible with Rock Band. On the bad side, their will be only two packages available this year. Game-only and the massive package mentioned earlier. These will be released for the 360 and PS3 first, while a PS2 version will follow a few weeks later (Wii LOL). I NEED the drums and I NEED the game immediately, so they’ve got me hooked. I’ll never sing and I could conceivably buy GH3 for my 360 and use that guitar, but the Rock Band guitar looks about as cool as a fake guitar possibly can (just look below) and has more functionality. So massive Rock Band package it is. God, I never thought I’d write so much about peripheral compatibility.

So I guess the real question is: Rock Band or Guitar Hero III?

I’m going to have to say that Rock Band is required. If the price seems a bit too steep, think about it: Two friends could share the price of a massive package, buy an additional game-only, and then share the peripherals for $115 each. That’s only $15 more than the game+guitar package for a next-gen version of Guitar Hero III. Of course, maniacs like me will buy both. GH3 does look to raise the difficulty to even a higher level, which is what is pulling me towards it. Plus, I can’t wait a month to get my fake musician fix. But really, looking at these songs, which are supposedly on Expert, Rock Band looks to be pulling a Nintendo in regards to the guitar. (Rock Band is really about the DRUMS to me, and I know that’s going to be hard as hell, so I’ll be more than happy.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjpu_DYCpeM

To be fair, most of those parts aren’t solos anyway. And “Epic” does look like it’s difficult enough to make me miss some notes. And Rock Band definitely looks a shitload better than Guitar Hero III. As much as I can gather from a shitty YouTube video, anyhow.

So there we go. I’m spent. Buy Rock Band. Buy Guitar Hero III if you’re really good at the past two games and aren’t sick of the formula yet. The setlists are both awesome, but the DLC (downloadable content) puts Rock Band over the top. Who’s Next and Nevermind (entire albums!) right off the bat. Unbelievable.